The room erupted into chaos.
The guards rushed from the doors, thrashing their swords about.
As several guests raced for the main entrance, the doors swung open, revealing hordes of guards that raced in, severing off heads and limbs as if competing to see who could reach the other side of the room first.
Black wings spread from the back of a woman in a red dress as she lunged at one of the guards to fight him off. Another soldier beside him took off her head, which fell back, blood jetting from her neck as her body collapsed to the floor.
Maggie gasped at the scene in horror.
Veylo grabbed a sword from one of the guards and joined them in their massacre as they slashed luminous swords about, sending more blood through the air, creating a fountain over the still, lifeless bodies that lay at their feet.
Maggie clutched her hand against her stomach and bowed over, vomit spewing past her lips onto the immaculate tile floor beside her.
As she lifted her head, an immortal raced to her, his eyes desperate, pleading for her to do something. She leapt to her feet and scrambled back to the wall beside the orchestra, all of whom sat perfectly still, watching the horror unfold. Maggie could only assume they had been warned about this ambush.
The immortal man grabbed at her when a sword ripped through his shirt and pushed his tie aside.
She gasped. She was trying to scream, but she couldn’t get it past her lips. She fell against the wall, sank to the floor, closed her eyes and, with all the strength in her, screamed out.
She wasn’t sure why she was screaming. There was nothing anyone could do to help her, and she knew now more than ever that there was no deity that could save her. Perhaps she screamed for the same reason that immortal had approached her, out of desperation, out of a lack of options to react any other way.
She trembled, and as the terror of the sounds of screams and swords ripping through bodies invaded her ears, the pain she’d felt so potently dissolved for just a moment.
Maggie kept her eyes closed until the sound had diminished.
The quiet surprised her.
It was so quiet she couldn’t help but think maybe she’d been hallucinating. Maybe nothing so dramatic had happened at all. Perhaps it had all been a terrible hallucination.
But as she opened her eyes and gazed across the room, she knew better. At first she thought,It’s just piles of clothes covered in red paint.
But this was nothing more than an illusion her mind had conjured to make sense of the tragedy, for as her eyes began to focus, she could see the wide eyes that looked like they’d witnessed murder, the mangled and blood-soaked appendages that appeared to have been stirred in a blender, and the gaping mouths that seemed as if they were mid-scream, despite the fact that no sound was being made.
Nearby footsteps, like a person walking through mud, captured Maggie’s attention. She shifted her gaze to Veylo, who walked through the bloody mess, to her.
Was he going to kill her, too?
He reached for her.
“Come,” he said, his eyes beaming even more than when they’d first entered the ballroom.
She was too scared not to listen. She took his hand and he helped her up, leading her through the bodies.
The immortal guards that surrounded them made their way back through the various doors around the room, leaving just Maggie, Veylo, and the silent orchestra.
As they reached the middle of the ballroom, Veylo turned to the orchestra and gave another signal.
They started playing again.
Maggie glanced at them, thinking,Why are they doing this?
“Soldiers,” Veylo said, apparently intuiting her confusion.
Maggie’s attention shifted back to him.
“They’re musicians, but they’re just soldiers… like my friends that just helped me eliminate these mild inconveniences.”
As the music started back up, Veylo forced Maggie to rock side to side with him. Like he was loosening her up. “Come on,” he said. “This is a happy occasion. Can’t you just enjoy it?”
